Make a Custom Printed Double Sided No. 10 Business Envelope From a Sheet of Paper

This instructable will show you how to make a customized standard No. 10 size business envelope out of an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper. This instructable is useful in many different situations. You can use it if you want to:

- Make a custom envelope with printing on the flap, front and back sides, and even the inside. Great for greeting cards, invitations, promo mailings, or just for the coolness factor.
- Make envelopes that match stationery with special colors, patterns, or paper types.
- Print addresses on your envelopes instead of handwriting them, even if your printer doesn't handle envelopes.
- Just have a plain envelope. You've run out, and you don't feel like going to the store (or can't).
- Be uber frugal. A piece of paper costs less than an envelope, and a minute of cutting and folding is worth the satisfaction of saving money (and notching another instructable in your belt).

Estimated Time to Complete Plain Envelope: Approximately 1 minute (once you know the process)

We'll go over how to make a plain envelope first. A double side printed envelope uses the same template and process, but you need to edit the template with a graphics program.

Step 1 Materials

This instructable uses very basic materials. You will need:

- The attached PDF files
- Scissors (or hobby knife suitable for cutting paper)
- Glue stick (preferred) or white glue
- Letter size (8.5"x11") sheet of paper. Heavier bond paper makes for a better feeling envelope.
- Printer
- Ruler (optional: can help with folding)

Please save or open the PDF files now.

Comments

[pmn9393]

This is kinda pointless, because most printer nowadays can print onto standard envelopes. Its just a switch to change paper thickness, or a built in sensor.

[15zhangfra]

lol, john doe.

[wenpherd]

is it possible to use GIMP or google sketchup

[Mideeeacres]

Great idea for those of us that forget envelopes while travelling. Thanks!

[PhilMuckracken420]

sick dude

[mathteacher]

Great idea!

[ChuckNorris]

WOW if i didn't intimidate paper into folding themselves into letters i would so use this

[mammie1956]

What a great site to browse for projects that appeal to high school students. And as far as entering the contest to benefit your program, I applaud your motivation and creativity. Good Luck!

[Happyman3444]

Great step by step instructions

[jimmyp23]

good point on the anti-aliasing...

[jimmyp23]

very precise, thanks!

[WBMASON]

good directions

[WE ARE SORRY]

good job!!

[cjg1313]

This is great idea with very user-friendly directions. Try it!

[teacher4life20]

good idea, very easy to follow and easy to make, good job, also works well wen im out of envelopes

[Tony Harivnak]

Excuse me' references to family guy are forbidden and punishable by 23 extended detentions(Huge Lisssssp)

[mpg2245]

this is by far the most incredible set of directions I have ever come across, the directions are so clear and precise YEA BY THE WAY JOHNNY CASH IS NOT COOL AT ALL

[turtle12]

yea way easier than printing on the envelope. I recommend trying it!

[steveneagles311]

its very good i love it. you must be a teacher..

[JohnnyCash84]

Cool idea. Much better than dealing with trying to print on an envelope.

[teachme55]

Very good idea, are you a engineering teacher? I may try this with my tech drawing students

[hanoverhsengineering]

Yes. 'We' refers to the two engineering instructors and the students at Hanover High School. We use instructables for projects on occasion (right now we are building 70+ Mousey the Junkbots) and we stumbled across the laser cutter contest just before it was too late. We put together our best effort for it and are crossing our fingers because a laser cutter is something that would greatly benefit our program. Designing an envelope is a great project that works well with most CAD programs (or even hand drawing if your doing that, though mirroring the folds in CAD helps alot). Its useful and fun. Now that we've made our first instructable, we'll being posting more in the future. Check back under our username in the future for any updates.

[Cornflower]

Truly Excellent concept! I don't have Photoshop or a PDF editor, so I recreated the template in EVE (the Embedded Vector Editor, a 75k portable image editor) instead of .pdf Others might want to make templates in WordPerfect, Word (OpenOffice) or whatever they are comfortable with.

[Weissensteinburg]

Those look great! Did you make the stencil, or did you get it somewhere?

[hanoverhsengineering]

We made the stencil in Autocad and then exported to PDF. In one of our classes (CAD I), students will be designing more sizes and different layout patterns. Successful ones will be added to the instructable when they are complete.

[GorillazMiko]

Awesome job! Looks great, first couple of pictures are awesome, nice job putting on the Robot and stuff.

[hanoverhsengineering]

Thanks! A creative mind can really go crazy with this, as you can do images that extend around the edges and across the flaps. You can even have a peek-a-boo type effect by having a statement go from the outside of the flap...and then finish on the inside. It can turn out to be very cool.